Smarter, not Harder

How one runner revamped his training and revived his racing

I first experienced the unique pleasure of distance running during my senior year in high school. I achieved modest success almost immediately, racing a 10-flat 2-mile and a 4:40 mile. This flash of potential was enough to help me get recruited to college as well as imbue me with a sense of invulnerability and an almost unshakable optimism in future success.

These youthful whims were soon dashed in college, however; not only did I fail to improve, I regressed fairly significantly. I turned in some truly hideous times: 4:50-plus miles, 17-plus 5Ks, and even a 30-plus 8K. It didn't make any sense to me at first–I was running a lot more miles, and a lot harder–yet I was slowing down, and racing became more and more difficult and painful. What was going on?

Spurred on by an uncommonly talented high school coach and an innate belief that I was better than my times suggested, I began to research. Before long, I discovered what is now obvious: I was extremely overtrained. I had reached the point where my body simply stopped responding to the demands placed upon it, and I was, in fact, harming myself even more by continuing to push.

The Training Cycle

As I discovered–both from research and personal experience–the process by which overtraining manifests itself is deceptively simple. Every time you go for a run, your muscles tear. When you rest and allow them to repair, you naturally get faster. In contrast, should you fail to allow your body sufficient time to recover from its most recent work, you incur a recovery deficit. Should this cycle continue, and you consistently and repeatedly engage in excessive work without adequate recovery, the deficit grows until full-blown overtraining sets in and severely damages muscular and cellular functioning.

Perhaps even more distressingly, recent scientific research has demonstrated that continued overtraining has deleterious psychological and neurological effects as well. Indeed, Tim Noakes, M.D., writes in Lore of Running that overtrained runners exhibit an impaired ability to release stress hormones in response to physical exertion as a result of exhaustion of the hypothalamus. As the hypothalamus is solely responsible for regulating the entire hormonal response of the body, such results are consistent with – and help to explain–additional symptoms of overtraining, such as insomnia, depression, and loss of libido and appetite.

In addition, Noakes notes that overtrained runner's brains also display an impaired capacity to "recruit" the muscles used in the activity for which the athlete is trained, as well as reduced sympathetic nervous system activity both at rest and during exercise. In such a state of physical and mental exhaustion, it is little wonder that overtrained runners' performance degrades.

Unfortunately, in my experience, most runners are resistant to the idea that they can train too hard. As Noakes succinctly describes, "We believe the harder we train, the faster we will run, and we ignore the evidence that indicates that this is blatantly untrue. Thus, we train harder and run worse. And then, in the ultimate act of stupidity, we interpret our poor races as an indication that we have undertrained. Consequently, we go out and train even harder."

This statement really hits the nail on the head. We simply can't seem to grasp the fact that the body will not respond to the stresses we place upon it once we cross a certain physical threshold. No matter how badly our mind wants to succeed, the body can only be willed to do so much before breaking down. As Bill Bowerman noted in Kenny Moore's biography, training is nothing more than "stress, recovery, and repetition." Our restless and ambitious minds simply can't seem to accept the "recovery" portion. Looking to Lydiard

Given my personal bout with overtraining, I knew firsthand that these revelations were accurate. They led me to expand my research in order to discover alternate training methods which would allow me to reach much higher performance levels, while at the same time avoiding injury/overtraining. First, I internalized Daniels' Running Formula; I then turned to some of the greats mentioned in Noakes' Lore of Running and in Michael Sandrock's Running with the Greats.

Throughout this research, one name continued to appear over and over again: Arthur Lydiard. Noakes, Daniels, and especially Bowerman praised him; his name and philosophies seeped into the writings of some of the most successful runners the world has known. After reading Running with Lydiard and digesting his ideas (as well as personally implementing them), I believe that this superlative praise is warranted.

Lydiard scoffed at the Western world's overindulgence in interval training. To Lydiard, the idea of training to peak three times a year was at best suboptimal and at worst legitimately dangerous and counterproductive. He recognized that interval training could only be approached within the context of reaching an overarching peak phase; in emphasizing anaerobic fitness at the expense of aerobic capacity, runners not only maximized their chances of sustaining injury and overtraining, but also ensured that their peaks would be dramatically shorter and smaller.

Lydiard's insight was to fix training around an extensive base-building period that lasted far longer than any other training program, as well as to stress the importance of the distance run within one's training schedule. The Lydiard system calls for a base-building phase lasting an absolute minimum of five months and which is anchored by three long runs a week. Once a powerful and intensive aerobic foundation has been established, and only then, will the runner embark on an anaerobic training program. Lydiard's anaerobic phase is designed to last a maximum of 12 weeks, followed by a short, "peak" racing period.

Interval Junkies

These ideas appear alien to the American running community. Quite simply, we're interval junkies. In general, we are taught from middle school through college to peak three times a year, once each season–cross country, indoor, and outdoor track. Further, very little emphasis is placed upon developing a firm aerobic base; rather, we are taught to take the shortcut of almost immediate interval training to mimic the benefits that can only be wrought from long hours on the road. By its very nature, interval training is far more taxing than plain vanilla distance running.

By fixing our training programs almost exclusively on anaerobic development, we are openly courting overtraining and thus limiting our ultimate potential. Even Jack Daniels' training system – by my estimation the most conservative mainstream American program – sets aside only six weeks for base building and 18 weeks for interval training/racing!

Endless Season

Certainly I suffered from a number of these systemic deficiencies during my time in college. In particular, I was severely handicapped by my inability to recover rapidly in between individual workouts. Our general schedule was Monday-Wednesday workouts with Saturday races and a Sunday long run; on the few weekends we didn't have races, we'd generally still have hard workouts. In addition, the actual workouts themselves were generally far more taxing than they should have been–"quality junk" training as Daniels would say. We would run too fast with too little rest to achieve the results we were training for, and we almost always trained at 5K pace or faster, thus neglecting threshold development.

Most importantly, however, I simply couldn't continue interval training for as long as the college schedule required. This was particularly true of indoor/outdoor track. With only a two-week break in between the two, the two seasons were effectively merged into one and I was thus subjected to five almost uninterrupted months of interval training/racing. My body (and certainly I am not alone in this) simply could not handle such a brutal schedule.

Looking back, it's little wonder that I became so overtrained. Running overly taxing workouts while simultaneously being prevented from recovering fully from one workout to the next, in conjunction with racing and a suboptimal base period (especially during indoor/outdoor), is an almost perfect storm of poor training techniques. One season pursuing such a program is enough to sabotage many runners; it should be no surprise that continuing to train in such a manner season after season leads to disaster.

Lydiard's ideas stand in shining contrast. Simply by running aerobically, the runner experiences a great number of benefits that cannot be wrought from anaerobic work. The cardiovascular system becomes well-conditioned. The relatively slow pace keeps injuries to a minimum and allows for continued muscular and skeletal strengthening as stress is added. Further, uninterrupted, continuous (if slower) improvement occurs.

When interval training is judiciously added to the aerobic foundation, fantastic performance benefits are realized almost immediately. Noakes warns, however, "When sharpening, the athlete is on the knife's edge that divides a peak performance from a disastrous race. For this reason, sharpening can only be maintained for relatively short periods of time, with a probable maximum of 8 to 12 weeks." Even Derek Clayton and Ron Hill could sustain heavy training for only 10 weeks before their performances began to deteriorate.

Learning from the Legends

I further discovered that Frank Shorter held similar ideals. His long and extremely successful career was aided by the same philosophy that peaking, coupled with only a few serious races a year, was the only way to fully reach one's potential. Similarly, he understood the vast importance of recovery within one's training program. Michael Sandrock notes in Running with the Legends: "Many runners never discover what a recovery day means. When young runners went with Shorter, they were often surprised how slowly they would go, and how even joggers would pass them. They kept expecting the pace to pick up, but it never did."

Shorter himself wrote in his 1984 Olympic Gold: A Runner's Life and Times, Historically, the peakers–the real peakers who pick their spots–win at the Olympics. Look at Lasse Viren or Waldemar Cierpinski or Kip Keino or Miruts Yifter, or even me. It's almost impossible for a distance runner to do both–to race frequently in top form in major competitions year in and year out and also fare well in the Olympics–Viren, at his best, was always in control. He had the peaking process down pat.

Viren was the most famous Lydiard disciple. Once the world-record holder in the 2-mile, 5K and 10K, as well as the winner of four Olympic gold medals (including the famous 1972 5,000m against Prefontaine), Viren's legacy was to adapt Lydiard's tenets to their extremes; he sought to peak not just once a year, but once every four years. Thus, by the time the Olympics rolled around, Viren was in peak shape, and virtually untouchable. As Noakes describes, I vividly recall watching a replay of the 1976 Olympic Games 10,000m final. With Viren leading the British hopeful Brendan Foster by half a lap, English broadcaster Ron Pickering remarked in dismay, "But Brendan Foster has beaten Lasse Viren four times this year." Viren spent four years of background training preparing for a single peak at the Olympic Games. And when he peaked, no one was near him. Of this ability Viren commented: "Some do well in other races, some run fast times, but they cannot do well in the ultimate, the Olympics...The question is not why I run this way, but why so many cannot."

Bringing it Home

After a dismal track season junior year in which I ran a 16:54 5K and a senior cross country season in which I merely went through the motions en route to consistent mid- to high-27-minute 8Ks, I tested the above described techniques on myself. Sitting out the indoor track season, I trained on my own, developing my aerobic base for four and a half months (a full three months longer than ever before) and eventually building up to 20-mile long runs every 10 days. Returning for outdoor track, and even within the constraints of a college racing schedule which precluded adequate recovery, I managed a 15:40 5K, a 35-second PR. Now, given no training constraints, I'm averaging 6:40/mile easy runs en route to a peak phase in the spring. The only questions now are: How much faster can I get? How great will my peak be? And how much more can you gain from adopting similar methods?